Meta

Social

You’re probably aware of the recent announcements about shifts in the way Facebook prioritises newsfeed content. Here we break down what it might mean for you, your brand and your brand’s social voice..

What’s happening?

After Facebook fake news seemingly hada very real effect on the 2016 Election and other recent political and cultural contexts, Mark Zuckerberg recently announced a shift in the distribution of content in your Facebook Feed. The platform is now encouraging users to share their personal stories and feelings to stem a decline in original writing/user posted content, and a gradual upswing in shared publisher content.

What it means?

Zuckerberg has announced that he will endeavour to ‘fix’ Facebook for both brands and users. How long will this policy remain in place? Facebook has been known to solve problems by discarding policies altogether. It will be interesting to see if after a drop-off in spend, Facebook persists with its new algorithmic priorities.

How it might affect your brand?

Measurement metrics will shift as we soon discover which audiences are most affected and how the new conversation-centric content resonates best.

Some brands will move their focus from a reach/awareness strategy to engagement heavy approach in an effort to spark conversations and move to the top of the feed as a trending topic (Remember: this means more than a ‘like’).

Tone of voice: more than ever, it will be important for our brands to appeal to their audiences on a personal level in language, content and formats.

Increase in use of Facebook as an ecosystem will rise. We anticipate brands to increase their utilisation of features where the conversation already exists including Messenger and Groups.

Formats: remember to play to the formats that Facebook favours. As an example, you might consider optimising stills with a slight animation to take advantage of a potential organic boost from motion.

Our opinion.

More than ever, it’s important for our brands to appeal to their audiences on a personal level. This generates amazing new creative opportunities to connect with individual accounts and spark conversation, media, and awareness of the voice behind the brand.

These changes also allow us to take advantage of Facebook Messenger to reach the public. We will continue to optimise video and other proven organic reach methods that are promoted by Facebook. We’re big on Facebook Groups and there is still a great opportunity for brands to speak to their audiences through influencers, crowd-sourced content and moderators.

We’re interested in the opinion of our community, let us know if you want to chat about any of the above.

This is just a post about one post. We work closely with a bunch of our clients on big, small and tiny ideas for social. With Jetstar, we run campaigns, create ‘campaignlettes’ and continually try new content formats and ideas.

Recently, we created an Instagram ad that asked users to screenshot a rapidly-moving animated image to randomly choose where they should go on a holiday next. Kinda destination roulette. People loved it! By using an interaction that is used everyday by people on their mobiles, but not actually embedded in Instagram iteself, we created a really novel way for people to engage with the brand and their travel dreams.

Simple, tiny fun. That worked.

– Over 485,000 consumers reached over the 3 days
– 850 clicks to the website
– 6,400 likes across 3 days and almost 100 re-grams
– Almost 500 comments, a few such as: ‘Super clever concept – well done Jetstar’, ‘Love this. Great marketing Jetstar’, ‘Very strategic move – bravo to the marketing team’, ‘Best marketing campaign by an airline I’ve seen’.

Sometime’s it’s the little things. Hit play and screenshot the below. Where you off to next?

To help the Jetstar celebrate its recent tenth birthday, we set in motion an emotive party game and followed as the gift of flights was delivered around the world.

The video captured Jetstar cabin crew playing the ultimate game of pass the parcel, delivering surprise domestic and international flights to unsuspecting members of the public in Melbourne, Tokyo, the Gold Coast and Queenstown.

The pass the parcel adventure began when the Jetstar Facebook community was asked whom they thought most deserved a free flight. After hundreds of comments, the most popular response was a hard-working nurse and so an unwitting nurse taking a break opposite the Alfred Hospital Melbourne triggered the gift-giving chain.

The Jetstar cabin crew presented her with a glowing orange box containing a free flight voucher and she was asked to set a challenge to whom she would like to pass the parcel onto next.

Throughout the journey, Jetstar was challenged to track down a myriad of characters from a man in a leather jacket, a mother pushing a pram, someone with a big smile as well as a family. Whatever the challenge, Jetstar found them and passed the parcel once more.

I always thought that what Instagram did really well was to help you capture a moment like you’d like to remember it was (not necessarily exactly how it was). The app kind of visually editorialised over what was happening, adding something (effects) you probably wouldn’t have been able to art direct yourself. So it helped you make beautiful momentoes. And in doing so, Instagram positioned itself much closer to users’ hearts than Facebook managed, with its factual, snippy status updates, or than Twitter with its more cerebral breaking news pieces and outbound links. Instagram managed to create an environment where it was easy to create beautiful artefacts, and then built a community around those feeds that were generally supportive and affirming. I think this affirmation has become part of the memory itself. Something happens, you capture it and Instagram it and then a later recollection of that moment is comprised of the event, the process and the outcome. Of course for the user, this is all mashed into one, single memory. And it’s often a better memory than you might have been left with without Instagram. It’s quite the product ambition, but maybe Instagram set out to make memories better.

Of course, throughout all of this, there is to some degree a suspension of disbelief by the user and community. Everyone knows the view didn’t look like that, that the sun wasn’t that saturated to the human eye and that those friends didn’t look quite as much as though they had come straight from a Terry Richardson shoot. But I was thinking recently about Instagram’s decision to add video to its service. It’s an incredible technical achievement (filters processed on the fly, anti-shake camera). But with more frames, a broader picture of what’s happening and more perspective, what effect will this feature have on the service’s ability to shape and stylise memories simply and beautifully? The reality of video competitor Vine is that a massive proportion of the value that service offers users is in the “method”, not the outcome. Vines are fun to composite but ninety nine percent of them are completely unwatchable. And as a result, Vine may never create the same kind of community around its creations.

This morning I came across this great post which calls Instagram’s addition of video, “The Death of Fantasy”. Exactly. Of course people will jump into videogramming and probably create new sub-art forms. But the memory making has changed by becoming that little bit more literal. I’m sure product developers and startups in similar fields will be watching the effects of this with interest. It only takes a tiny glimpse of an edge case amongst online communities for a fresh new service to rise from a rupture in usage. Let’s see.

With Friday’s announcement regarding the impending launch of Facebook Home, we mobile users are now getting all lathered up about the possibilities of Facebook leaking out its app into every orifice of our phone. No more will we need to tediously tap an icon to see our friends every update and photo: it will allow bubble to the surface in beautiful Chrome-less form when we’re not looking (Battery life, watch out). Facebook is taking advantage of the openness of Android’s architecture if trying to provide a differentiated experience not possible on iOS and trying to evolve its mobile, social environment to be more in line with the way people use Facebook on the go (read: lots of messaging, very little ‘app’ interactivity).

But, of course, this service is ‘free’. And, as such, comes with more than a few concerns about privacy, given Facebook’s record of missteps in this area. As Home rips through through your communication, location, social activity looking for better ways to deliver its goodies, so to is it mining every aspect to offer up relevant, contextual advertising. And this might not be advertising off to the right hand-side of a page or drip-feed into your newsfeed. Quite possibly, given Home’s ambitions, these ads might find their place right up their. On the front of your mobile. Every time you wake it up. The Verge asks “but what if your friends are ugly?” Good point. But also: I’m not sure if you’ve ever seen any ugly Facebook ads or not.. Oh hang on, yes I am sure. Here are a few that might welcome you next time you whip out your most personal of devices: